How to tell a compelling brand story

In this day and age, people are tired of having companies pushing their products down their throats. Instead, prospects look for genuine, meaningful, long-lasting connections with B2B brands. And what’s the best way to cultivate these connections? By telling a brand story. 

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By implementing a compelling brand story to your business, you can effectively humanize your company and easily communicate who you are, what you do, and how you can help your clients solve their business challenges. A good brand story conveys the purpose and values of a business in a way that resonates with prospects and makes the audience feel emotionally bonded. 

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How do you create a story like this for your B2B brand? Just follow these four tips!

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1: Establish Your Brand’s Mission

Firstly, make sure you understand your brand’s mission. Ideally, you should be able to articulate your brand’s offer in just a few sentences, while also stating your company’s voice and personality. This is your time to present your reader with unique parts of your brand that set you apart from others in your industry (this is where your value proposition comes in). Once this is established, it will serve as a guide for all of your upcoming content. 

You might want to ask yourself the following questions, to help clarify your brand mission:

• What is my brand all about?
• How does my brand provide value to my customers?
• What purpose does my brand want to accomplish through the brand story?
• Why does my brand exist for in the first place?
• How does my brand fill the market gap?
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2: Use Your Brand Voice/Personality

Voice and personality are powerful weapons in any brand’s arsenal. So use them! 

Your story must be driven by brand personality. Brand stories are not marketing materials: they’re not ads or sales pitches. The narrative should be told with the brand persona and the writer’s personality at the core of the story. Trust us on this: boring stories won’t attract and capture readers, but a narrative packed with personality definitely can!

Your story should be inspired by the people who create, connect, and develop the growth and success of your brand - not just about the products you sell.
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3: Sprinkle in Some Humanity               

While facts and statistics are very important, be sure to sprinkle in some humanity and emotion in your writing to get through to your audience. Regardless of what kind of business or industry you’re in: there’s always a story that involves people. 

To create a long-lasting, genuine connection with your audience, you need to show them that you’re a human. A normal, hardworking human - just like them. The reason this is so important is because people trust other people. By presenting yourself as a real person, you provide someone real for prospects to trust. This naturally and effortlessly builds a connection.

Humour and sentimentality are great ways to connect with your prospects and allow them to feel a sense of personability with your brand. 

Keep in mind: When using sentimentality - it’s important to use the correct words so that your customers can feel like you’re speaking directly to them. You are trying to trigger an emotional response from your customers with your brand story, so keep this in mind. Focus on telling the truth and sharing the real, authentic experiences - so that people are able to relate and spread the word in the process. 

Here are some helpful tips:

• For an origin story: If you can, interview the founder of your company. Find out what led them to start it and what keeps it going. If that’s not possible, talk to long-time employees and look for old documents (memos, clips, and photos) to learn about your company’s history.
  

• For case studies and customer profiles: If you have a sales team within your company - ask about previous customer stories that are memorable to them. You can reach out to those clients and see if they would want to be in a case study or profile showcasing. Ask about the challenge they were trying to overcome, why they chose your company, and the results of that choice.
  

• For employee and community stories: Talk to co-workers around your company. Ask them about what their jobs are like or whether they volunteer in their communities.

4: Incorporate Storytelling Elements

Effective brand storytelling doesn’t require you to create an epic, drama-packed, action narrative. But to make your brand story engaging and memorable, you should use some basic storytelling elements like a conflict, turning point, or descriptive words that show off your company.
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Two tips you can steal:

• Establish the main character of the narrative, the conflict (the problem) of the story, and the turning point (solution to the problem). To wrap up - tie the story together by describing your brands’ offer and value proposition.
  

• After you’ve jotted down the story, be sure it reads well. Make sure the tone is conversational and simple. Read the text out loud - or ask others to read it and give you feedback.

The Final Rundown

Here are some of the key points you should consider when creating your brand story:

• Offer insight on how you came up with the idea for your product
• Go into this process, with the goal of building a relationship with the prospect through your brand story
• Mention the motivating factors in your life that helped you establish your business
• Give some insight into the ethics of your company to build trust with your clients
• Talk about moral practices that are shared by the people in your company
• Tell your clients why they should choose your business or services over your competitors (offer value proposition)

Remember: When you begin creating this marketing campaign, focus on how it impacts people on a human level - don’t approach your marketing efforts strictly from a business point of view. Try to appeal to the emotions and feelings of your B2B clients so that they can feel a connection with the product that you’re offering. 

It doesn’t matter if your brand story is about how you built your business or how your product improves people’s lives - finding a unique brand story is one of the most effective ways to engage and encourage people to start a relationship with your company and hopefully become your buyers.